Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Character Education

Character Education programs are mandated in about forty of
the states in the US. According to our textbook “Teachers, Schools, and
Society”, these character education programs focus on teaching students the
characteristics of trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring,
and good citizenship. I believe that physical education class is a perfect
place for these morals to be taught to students.

In a regular
classroom setting, these values can be taught through discovery in literature
or history. But teaching these values in a physical education setting is a
little bit different. I believe that one of the best ways to teach character
education in physical education is during project adventure and orienteering
experiences. These units may involve the students doing high or low ropes
course, rock wall climbing, trust falls, and group cooperation activities. The
skills that are taught in character education programs are part of the
affective domain. In my opinion many physical education programs do not touch
enough up this domain and thus character education is a great way to integrate
characteristics such as trustworthiness and respect into physical education.

In PED 434,
Statistics in Sports and Physical Education, we learned how to integrate the
affective domain into physical education. In order to assess students on a
characteristic such as respect, the teacher needs to be able to see and to hear
respect. In other words, teachers need something objective to assess. For
example, it is not good enough for a teacher to simply say that a student
showed respect for participation points that day. They need to justify the fact
that the student showed respect by saying the student worked cooperatively with
a group in a project adventure activity and listened to what classmates had to
say as well as offered his/her own ideas.

I believe
that character education is something that is developed throughout life. Most children
are taught from young age to play fair and to show characteristics such as
respect and kindness. As I have gone through my journey in life thus far, I know
that it is easier to show these characteristics in certain situations more than
in other situations. Life is a journey about truly finding out who you are and
what your purpose is in life. I believe that character education really aids in
this self-discovery.

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About Me

Hi Everyone! Welcome to my blog! My name is Elena and I am a junior physical education major at SUNY Cortland. I also am studying a concentration in adapted physical education. I plan on getting my master's degree in health education. I love working with kids and playing all kinds of sports! Read my blog to learn more about me and what I've been doing at Cortland :)